If you look at any guidebook of Zanzibar, you’ll see lots and lots about the merits of one beach versus another—and the beaches here are definitely worth exploring. But for the past month, I’ve been spending most of my spare moments exploring the less celebrated sections of Zanzibar, namely the offices and homes of rural government officials.
My goal is to talk with as many, and as many kinds of people as possible throughout Zanzibar—about their literacy practices and their attitudes about literacy: What do people here do to find information and entertain themselves, and what do they think about the importance of being able to read and write? Figuring out how to find people in a systematic way to ask these questions has taken some time, but the administrative structure of Zanzibar has helped quite a bit—now that I've waded through this same structure to get approval to do research.
Zanzibar is divided into 5 administrative regions, which are, in turn, divided into 2 districts each, for a total of 10 districts. Within those districts, there are multiple shehias—236 total for Zanzibar as a whole. Each of those shehias has a head administrator, called the sheha, who is an appointed official and is responsible for a variety of tasks, including keeping records on individuals living in the shehia, settling disputes among residents of the shehia, and implementing government laws. The shehia is a meaningful designation, like a neighborhood, and the sheha is a person of importance who keeps pretty close tabs on what’s happening in his shehia. Because of the permission I’ve received from the Zanzibar government, this whole administrative structure enables me to talk with the shehas, who, in turn, know how to get a purposive sample of people from within their shehias.
And so, on weekends, my research team and I go out to neighbor-hoods, and plunk ourselves down for a few hours at whatever meeting space is available in that shehia. We’ve been to concrete block town halls, schoolrooms, administrative buildings, and homes, and I’ve now seen a much wider variety of homes than I had up to this point. It’s a strange thing to do, really, going into people’s home communities and asking them questions about what they do and what they think. But respondents have been very accommodating and interested.
My research is still very much in process, but I’m getting a much richer picture now of what literacy is like in Zanzibar. For instance, I’ve learned (no great surprise) that the overwhelming majority of people here have never used the Internet. But, many people use cell phones for some of the same purposes (for instance, it’s possible to get daily headlines sent from the BBC to one’s cell phone). I’ve also learned (again, no great surprise given the scarcity of books and libraries here) that most people do not go to libraries or read books for pleasure. But, many adults read their children’s schoolbooks for pleasure.
I plan, eventually, to administer an English version of this same questionnaire in the US, and I imagine that some answers will be different. One comparison I’m sure I’ll want to pursue relates to television viewing. In Zanzibar, the people who watch television tend to be the ones who also read the most. Will that be true in America, where television watching is more prevalent than it is here? I’m also very curious about religious literacy. Here, children and even adults spend many hours in religious education at madrasas, where they learn large portions of the Koran by heart. When we ask questionnaire respondents if/what they read for work, for pleasure, and with family, many people say that they can’t read. But those same people when asked if/what they read as part of their religious practice will list a whole variety of things that they “read” whenever they recite the words of the Koran. Will there be such a different perception of sacred and secular reading in America? And many people here have other people read and write for them for a variety of reasons, both at home and at work. Will the same be true in the United States, where reading materials are more plentiful and where daily life is reputed to be much less communal?
As always, asking questions leads to more questions, but the pursuit is certainly keeping me engaged!
No comments:
Post a Comment